I liked this.
The fact is alternative processes makes difference to viewers and typically gives extra "wow" effect. It brings some unreality to this super reality life. I'm not pointing at pixel peeped digital files at all, oh no!
that were not mediated by tiny electrical signals inside a silicon honeycomb, governed by a maze of tech company patents that tell me I don't own the things I make.
Missed this questions earlier. By scene selection/composition...working with the available light to create images that need no further dodging or burning when printed....BTW Vaughn how do you burn & dodge when exposing the negative?
There do remain, a few materials that allow you to work in a darkroom and enlarge from a smaller original negative and create a larger negative for contact printing purposes.
Photo Warehouse used to be a good source for those materials, but there are other alternatives.
There also used to be materials that gave you an enlarged negative in one step - a direct positive approach.Do you mean lith film?
Full disclosure, I'm biased towards film and I've made digital negatives. I print with both. You might find this article from The Light Farm interesting.
http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/DigitalNegatives/DigitalNegativesPart1.htm
I really wish that there would be easier way.
The point is you are destroying the physical integrity of the original capture, even though the final image may look similar to that originated on film. If you can live with the concept of one's and zero's as your original creative image, then that's fine.
Digital negs at best are contact printed. They won't hold up when they're enlarged. I might be wrong on this, but the resolution of an analog negative is way higher than ink jet printed transparency film.Thank you for this source, very interesting indeed. I think it gives a good answer to my original question. The only problem with the "apples and apples" comparison is that the works were illuminated differently. The paper looks the same and there seems to be better resolution on the analog negative and increased sharpness on the digital. The resulting images are very different, not one being better or worse.
With any process, film, digital or otherwise, there is a learning curve to getting ones basics under control. Once you have those basics under control, it is easy to troubleshoot problems that while learning seemed insurmountable. Digital negatives, once you have the basics down, are equally dependable as film negatives. They do look different, but not better or worse, just different. I prefer the look of a print from a film negative, but I'm not unhappy with digital negatives now that I understand the basics and have the process basically under control. And as fgorga said, there are a lot of good reasons to make digital negatives, not the least of which is that if you screw it up by printing while your emulsion is still wet, or you drop it on the floor and step on it, or you trim into the image area while trying to remove excess "paper" from around the image, well, a replacement is just a few mouse clicks away.I tried alt processes and digital negatives last year. While I enjoyed the alt process, I absolutely HATED making digital negatives. I found them extremely difficult and highly undependable.
Can't you just make an inkjet print on paper right away, if you have an inkjet printer and already have the image on the computer? I'm sure there's a platinum/cyanotype etc. plugin to download?
...shooting film because we like shooting that way and the control it gives [...] is it worth it to stick with film in my case, or is that just ridiculous?
I love it when people claim one artificial facsimile is superior to another. Regardless of medium, you're not capturing photons-- you're capturing the effect of photons, and in the case of film, running it through a destructive chemical process, and then projecting it, usually through filters, onto another emulsion which is then processed through a second chemical process to alter it into an image-- a paper print is always at least three steps removed from the original image you captured.
With digital, you can, if you wish, produce a final viewable image in one analog -> digital translation step.
But neither is composed of the photons you saw when you took the original exposure.
For alt photography workshops, digital negatives are heaven-sent (as long as the printer holds up during the workshop). Students submit their files, the instructor does his/her magic with them and outputs a set of negatives that will all print exactly the same time on the exact same materials ..
If the OP will allow, for those of us in a hybrid place without an enlarger but shooting film because we like shooting that way and the control it gives, I've thought of the scan-to-photoshop-to-digital-negative as essentially a digital enlarger that may (emphasis on "may") afford more control for those of us more familiar with digital editing (me). I shoot 4X5 and don't see switching to 10X14 or similar ULF film sizes in my lifetime (read this as very dangerous because every "never" I've ever said has always always always turned into something I do today), and so I wonder whether besides digital capture to digital negative - how many are actually following this path versus what sounds like a rare path... the one I'm on... where film remains the original but the digital negative just affords a flexible output size? And is it worth it to stick with film in my case, or is that just ridiculous?
I love it when people claim one artificial facsimile is superior to another. Regardless of medium, you're not capturing photons-- you're capturing the effect of photons, and in the case of film, running it through a destructive chemical process, and then projecting it, usually through filters, onto another emulsion which is then processed through a second chemical process to alter it into an image-- a paper print is always at least three steps removed from the original image you captured.
With digital, you can, if you wish, produce a final viewable image in one analog -> digital translation step.
But neither is composed of the photons you saw when you took the original exposure.
So I'm trying to convince myself that the use of a digital camera to create a non digital image is actually the way to work. Today's digital tools facilitate the process and its reproducibility and they feel like a hammer in my hand.
introducing a digital technology in the process does not really matter. Or does it? Does the scanned or contact printed analog negative "shows" in the final image?
I would like to see many of the "purists" work without the aid of any modern technology...
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